What happens if meteor hits ocean

If an asteroid splashes down in deep water, the preliminary results suggest that the resulting waves would resemble a storm surge, creating floods but avoiding a dangerously looming wall of water.

The researchers also collected information about the size of the crater formed when an asteroid crashes into shallow water. If the waves break when they reach the continental shelf instead of at the beach, they may be more hazardous to shipping lanes than to the people on the shore, Robertson says. For now, the team is working to fit the equations to the experimental results.

They plan to investigate how energy moves between the craters and the tsunami waves, a turbulent process. According to Robertson, the energy lost during this transition is not well understood and can vary depending on the properties of the impact, such as the density, size, and impact angle of the incoming object.

Robertson says the experiment can be replicated by college and even high school students, though he emphasized the need to be safe. He said valuable data can be gathered with an unmodified paintball gun, and that you should never shoot someone with a modified weapon. He also reminded anyone interested to keep the chamber empty and the safety on until the gun is mounted on the stand and aimed at the ground.

Water balloons and handfuls of sand could also produce interesting results. Editor's Note: This article was updated on November 19th to correct the spelling of one of the researcher's children in the photo caption. Sorry, Ginevra! Save Dark Skies. By: Diana Hannikainen November 11, By: Bob King November 10, By: Camille M.

Carlisle November 9, This Week's Sky At a Glance. On both sides of the Atlantic, coastal cities would be washed out by such a tsunami. An asteroid kilometers in diameter impacting between the Hawaiian Islands and the West Coast of North America, would produce a tsunami which would wash out the coastal cities on the West coasts of Canada, U.

Conceivably tsunami waves can also be generated from very large nuclear explosions. However, no tsunami of any significance has ever resulted from the testing of nuclear weapons in the past. Furthermore, such testing is presently prohibited by international treaty. Click the link below to view a movie that shows a physics-based computer simulation of the tsunami generated by the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid 65 million years ago.

This asteroid impact is thought to responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Marauding space rocks fly around interplanetary space with no regard for Earth's precious biosphere. If they have our planet in their sights, they're going to hit us. And depending on their mass and speed, they could hit us hard. But depending on where an asteroid hits, the fallout will vary greatly.

If an asteroid was predicted to hit land near a major city, we might be able to evacuate in time and disaster response agencies have carried out drills that focus on this possibility , but the damage to society, infrastructure and economy would be terrible, obviously. But if an asteroid hits one of our oceans — water makes up for 70 percent of our planet's surface and is therefore a more likely scenario — the scope of the impact is poorly understood.

Gisler is determined to better understand the realities of a massive impact in the ocean and presented his team's findings at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco last week , showcasing the dramatic 3-D modeling results of an ocean-impacting asteroid. Never before has an impact scenario like this been studied in such detail and the simulation revealed that Gisler's original instincts had merit: devastating post-impact tsunamis we see in the movies are as fictional as the science fiction plot lines they are a part of.

He likens an asteroid ocean impact to throwing a rock into a pond. Sure, the energy of the rock hitting the water will produce waves, but the ripples are very dispersive.